And in a court of law witnesses are cross examined by opposing counsel to test the credibility and veracity of the prior testimony.
In any case, in your fervor to "believe" you failed to see what it was that I was questioning in the previous post. I didn't attack the witnesses or even his conclusions. I attacked his "experimental design" as being faulty. The researcher bias and confirmation bias were obvious. He'd made up his mind prior to doing his research and, predictably, read his tea leaves to confirm his prior belief. That's why it isn't science.
Just to make is clear what my objections are I'll go over the list one item at a time keeping in mind the following:
We can only sift the evidence and search for some common denominators among the experiences, and possibly some relationship with known laws of physics. So far these common factors have been discovered.
#1, A trigger factor that appears to set the occurrence in motion.
Trivial.
Every event has a "trigger." If nothing else this complies with the laws of thermodynamics, and a half dozen conservation laws. Events don't set themselves in motion. This isn't a "common factor."
#2, Abrupt onset of the experience.
Undefined. What is "abrupt"?
#3, A sensation of living in two time zones at once, either past and present or future and present.
Self-serving, It describes an emotion not a physical law
.
#4, A feeling of being an integral part of the experience or a participant in the action.
Trivial. Of course the witnesses had a "feeling of being an integral part..." The action was happening to them. Who else would they describe as being integral to the action? Not a "common factor."
#5, A noticeable absence of sound from beginning to end of the time slip. (this depends on time slip)
Does not fit the premise of "common factors
."The wording itself states that the absence of sound is not a common factor.It is a "sometimes" factor
, if a factor at all.
#6, A marked difference is frequently mentioned between normal light conditions and those experienced during the time slip. A 'silvery light' is often described.
Does not fit the premise of "common factors
."The wording itself states that the "silvery light conditions" is not a common factor. It is a "sometimes" factor
, if a factor at all.
In the end there is no statement about those cases that did not fit his criteria, why they are not included in the data and how that data may have changed the outcome of the research. For example, in the US the frequency of schizophrenia in the adult population is ~0.25%. If the researcher discovered that 2.5% of the witnesses had been diagnosed with schizophrenia prior to their experience would he include that as one of his weakly bound "common factors"? A 2.5% schizophrenia rate is 10X the rate in the general population. It might be significant, if not common. Is there any statement about the state of sobriety of the subjects when they experienced their "event"? Would it be important to include their state of sobriety as a common factor? Would it be important to look at how people describe a loss of consciousness event and compare it to the above criteria?
I'm not suggesting that there is an inordinate schizophrenia rate among the experimental population, that a certain number were intoxicated, were suffering from anoxia or simply passed out for some other reason. But it is a valid area of exploration because the above criteria does tend to fit the case of loss of consciousness quite well.
In any such experimental design the researcher is obligated to describe the experimental group in detail (yes, there are limits - the detail must be non-trivial).
He sifted through the data, found cases that fit his ideal (cherry picking) and included that as his data set. How do we know that he cherry picked his theory confirming group? Because he included subjects in his group as confirming the criteria that did not fit the common factor premise. It's not science.
Dunno, but beware hoaxers who feign expertise in physics.